Where are we at for Andy’s plantation project in the Gers department of France?

Gers department of France, November 2023

Here is Andy’s tree landscape, almost five years after planting. His project aims to improve biodiversity and preserve and infiltrate water. The trees are thriving despite increasingly hot and dry summers. Only three trees failed to survive the last time the plantations were monitored. They will not be replanted, as offshoots from the surrounding trees have already taken their place and are growing there instead. So we can safely say Andy’s project has been a great success!

In total, the project has enabled him to plant 300 trees of more than 10 different species:

• Walnut: 80 trees
• Black poplar: 50 trees
• Apple: 20 trees
• Hazel: 15 trees
• Fig tree: 15 trees
• Vine peach: 15 trees
• Sessile oak: 40 trees
• Plum: 15 trees
• Pear tree: 20 trees
• Pomegranate: 15 trees
• Mulberry tree: 15 trees

(Good) stories repeat themselves and so do (good) agroforestry projects. This (homemade) saying applies to Andy’s project on his farm in Naroques. He decided to introduce the same agroforestry system in England, his country of origin. So he now has two farms based on the same model.

The farm in Gers is now run on a day-to-day basis by a young farmer, Mathieu, who was unable to buy his own land. With a background in farming (he has a vocational diploma in farm management), Mathieu completed a work placement on the farm in Naroques, then went on to manage it.

In winter, he prunes the fruit trees so they produce enough for his own needs and maintains the fencing. The hedges and forest trees are now growing freely and are maintained by the herd of Sussex cows – they like nibbling the leaves!

Andy has installed electric fencing to protect all the trees and ensure they are just maintained by the cows’browsing, not all eaten up.

In terms of output, cereal production, halted in 2023, will resume next year with wheat-soya rotation and reduced tillage. As you can see, five years on, there have been a few changes, but the cereal-tree-cattle combination is still thriving.

In addition to tree planting financed by A Tree for You, Mathieu has taken on management of a syntrophic farming plot. This was planted four years ago with tree density and should produce large quantities of timber, energy wood, and fruit. Syntrophic farming describes a agroforestry system based on maximising biomass production per square metre and optimising resources.

In conclusion, the project funded by A Tree for You on Andy and Mathieu’s farm has proved a great success, demonstrating in the field one of the objectives of agroforestry – ‘to transform farming from the soil to the landscape’.